


Mother, mother, untie me

by tco



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Biblical References, Castiel as God, F/M, Gen, Godstiel - Freeform, Hell Trauma, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Retelling, Torture, celebratingdean, week storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tco/pseuds/tco
Summary: Dean's story goes mostly unheard. And it shook him all life long.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babybluecas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybluecas/gifts).



_I cannot_   
_Run from my family_   
_They're hiding inside me_   
_Corpses on ice_   
_Come in if you'd like_   
_But just don't tell my family_   
_They'd never forgive me_   
_They say that I'm crazy_   
_But they would say anything_   
_If it would shut me up_

_  
_ (from  _Runs in the Family by_  Amanda Palmer)

**[ground zero]**

Dean could tell a whole lot of stories. The ones he got to tell, he all learned from his mother who lied and cast spells of charming, warm distraction even before it all rolled into the fire that swallowed her.

Dean wears this like it’s his skin, as if he was made to do just that. It’s natural and easy to lie and smile, like breathing. Truth is suffocating, it’s drowning - it’s death. A weapon in somebody else’s hand, never his because nobody ever listens. And these days there’s only his father, sometimes, to not do that. Here, he’d do something else. From every cough of Dean’s truth, John would weave a rope. Dean knows, has few illusions, even fewer stories to tell himself and make it better, though he clings to those he has left. His throat is marked, by now, with the price of each slip and fuck up the same way trees show their age, beheaded.

First ring - there was a tug at Dean’s hair when he was four years old, and it has never weakened. It hurt so much he couldn’t speak. In his tiny hands there were no words to hold, to give, just cinders of what was his house, once. Ashes of his mother.

And Sam. Already too heavy to hold him, but Dean did, anyway. With time, Sam has grown roots into his arms.

This is the story his nightmares tell him, the one his bruises repeat, the one tale whistling in unrelenting silence of his car, now that Sam’s gone (John is always gone, even present). It’s in the phone call that never comes, the pull at his head, the only thing ringing.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**[1.]**

Dean has all heart shelves of stories, but Sam’s presence talks over them; especially when Sam’s quiet. It doesn’t mean he’s listening. It’s loaded, always, that silence. A gun to Dean’s chest, in its middle, only slightly to the left. The cold of that barrell never quite melts down, so Dean tries harder and harder, for Sam. To be the story Sam wants him to be, but Sam, he doesn’t like Mary’s tricks either, anymore.

Or non-fiction, when Dean bleeds it.

Dad just doesn’t like Dean.

He is the hand that’s pulling - at his hair, at his strings, at his sorrows. Not a sound comes out. The noose at his throat he’s told it’s a corset, has him persevere, has him aware of every word spun. A room for mistakes lies in a different house, not the temporary ones he shares with Sam, not in the omnipresent temple of his father.

Dean is a quiet instrument in his hands; best chiseled.

Only sometimes he tells Sam John is good in all his bads, so maybe one of them would get to sleep at night and not fear the moment when the world goes out.

Dean doesn’t tell himself that story anymore, or any.

A part of his heart (the one cradling the legend) dies between podunk nowhere and Nebraska. Dies harder in cold hospital walls. Burns into something so small no reaper could find it and bring it back. And what’s burned stays gone. Fire just runs in the family, is all. If he’s the girl to burn this time? Then be it. He will, at least, go down in blaze of glory.

Dying, dead - he is the same unheard, unseen, read wrong and used. His father makes sure to remind him what he’s made for. To Dean there is nothing new under the sun. Except of, maybe, the skin-covered holes in every single of his guts, howling empty. It was smaller, once. Now he doesn’t know how to manage.

But he does now understand how women in white come to happen.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**[2.]**

Dean tries his best not to tell the story his bones hold, this one is not for any ears, even his own. He forces a wedge between himself and him, and him, and Sam. This is how safety is built, this is how screaming is made peripheral, almost quiet. His favorite story to keep dreaming is the one where Sam shuts up, stops tugging at his hair until Dean’s mouth is forced open and pain with truth flood bitter, a river of all the things that aren’t milk and honey.

Sam doesn’t want that, he wants the story of easy redemption for the prodigal son, wants the secret of Dean’s lie-driven inhuman strength he so envies and hates, but Dean left those fairytales in another heart’s pocket, the one he ditched by his father’s pyre.

He tries to be of comprehension, to have a beginning, an extension and an ending, all in clear, sharp, safe letters, but deep inside he lacks chronological or any order, he is plots twisted, began and never resolved. The final period is still about John’s last move, and it owns him. Dean’s name is rewritten to spell I.O.U instead.

 _From now on you will be fishing for salvation_ \- it means. But all he was given is a broken net that can’t capture a thing, certainly not Sam who’s destined for running. Dean’s Gennesaret has no fish and no miracles. He is made to play the leading role in a failure, in the first page of the script he reads that, ending spoiled at the very beginning.

He doesn’t want to be his mother’s empty grave, but he will be.

It’s too heavy for one spine to carry a whole library of already knowing. Who died and made him Cassandra?

Ah, right.

If you can’t save him, kill him.

How do you save someone who will never listen?

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**[3.]**

You don’t.

And at the end of this story you really die. And then you die, and then you die, and then you d-

“Couldn’t you for once go for a different song of screaming, Dean?” He can’t hear himself screaming anymore, but can and will hear Alastair always. “Learn to read between the lines. Your mommy’s name was Mary and John is close enough to Joseph to fly past the censors. You were made to die, everyone knows that. Old news.” This is the moment when he should shrug, but his hands are full of Dean right now. Buried somewhere around the spot where Dean’s ribs once were, before they were reassigned to his skull, to his hands, to his feet, piercing better than any hooks.

The pull to his head is Alastair’s now, and he makes very good use of it, it leaves handfuls of hair ripped like pages. “This is just act one of your three part myth arc, baby doll.”

Today, Dean has no tongue, no teeth, no option for dialogue. Rolled one on participation. But he still has eyes and he doesn’t like the almost fondness he reads off Alastair as he speaks.

“So hang in there, kitty.”

So Dean hangs.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**[4.]**

From the debris of his answer to Alastair thirty years long bedtime story, Dean gets pulled - by his hair, by his arm, by a white light. Into a cliffhanger, into a pine box, into human shape and size.

But, God, between the covers there’s a story he wants to keep six feet under. He remembers it now, better than his mother’s face, than any life saved, than the sound of his own voice before it got scrubbed to the frame and died hoarse: the weight of every tool in his hands and everything he’s done with them.

It’s loud in his head and it will follow.

For now, the noise is louder, it follows closer. Then it comes.

Beautiful and out of place, a deer in a wasteland. Force of nature beyond any nature he’s ever known. Wearing the best salvation, someone’s best sunday suit, someone’s eyes. He tries to read the price tag it comes with, but it’s not in any language he knows.

It tells him it’s celestial. Soon he starts to orbit. Starts to tell it stories. The beautiful deer is thirsty for words. Its name feels old and foreign on his tongue, he cuts it in half, he gets so much closer.

Farther from his mother - she sewn herself with more lies than he could swallow. She rattles in his boot like a shard of glass and even if he’s careful, it cuts. To all his stories she has sentenced him. He was made to bear witness, to work.

And from Sam, who found a better storyteller - and it takes one to know one - her stories were pretty, fuckable, and grand; Dean’s were never like that so they need to stop.

The noose on Dean’s throat is Sam’s now, handmade. Not much of a surprise, pint of ache and just a teaspoon of disappointment. The user’s manual always said Dean was made to be kept quiet. There’s no telling the Boy King he’s naked.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**[5.]**

On a wild guess, not that Dean keeps count, this is probably act three.

The one that makes clear he was playing the leading role in being an extra all along, just a person-leather bound cover for an older story, for characters of bigger import.

The one where he rips all the lions on his path, one by one, and finally understands: he will never rip them all, no matter what he does, they will keep coming. His hands are tired. His heart has ran out of ink to write shit of his own, so he might as well step into the script he was made for and play his fucking part.

And then his spine is full of echo, his head is swimming and ringing both and his hair would be held in an iron grip if only his skin wasn’t so repelling to the touch of something other than a fist.

“I gave everything for you. And this is what you give to me?!”

He’s on the ground, curled, hears the footsteps, feels the ending. Only that small bit he didn’t see coming - please, don’t be Delilah, don’t try and bind, don’t demand this, not you. Maybe he mocked, maybe he lied to be right here, right now, but he never made any vows, aside of the one to fight for free will. Never promised how this story would end, but the thing about having free will is that it unlocks this scenario too, as long as it’s his own damn choice.

Well, it looks like it ends like this, with it cut off. And if you ask Dean (except that no one does, thanks), it’s just one lion too many.

“Do it!”

Cas doesn’t do it, not the final it Dean was hoping for, defeated and adorned with dirt, blood and puddles of something that might or might not be piss. It doesn’t mean it’s good. Doesn’t mean it’s alright, but maybe he’s not Delilah after all.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**[6.]**

He gets thrown into a foreign genre, the epilogue isn’t his, but Sam’s. He learns to live it, learns to love it, really does. He’s as close to being serene as it gets with his insides having been carved out empty.

Dean doesn’t know how Lisa is doing it, but she understands. She makes it real. She offered her shoulder, her heart, her home. She listened and didn’t turn away. Her hand runs softly through his hair every night, he melts into the comfort like a child. Sometimes he even thinks maybe he’s really made for this, maybe he earns it one day, if he tries.

But past comes crashing through his door in an answer to his prayers, and the answer is “or not.”

The whole choir, they say, “you weren’t made to live, you were made to kill. Fuck your plowshare, take the sword”, and he’s pulled by his hair until his purpose sticks.

Never sticks good enough. Dean’s eyes are too well-versed in reading life to not see all the flaws in the script. He can hear how flat and fake all the lines sound. In time, even Cas’s. Especially his.

Were you the one to write this, Delilah? Made me sleep in your lap unaware?

He doesn’t have to ask. Already knows the answer. Doesn’t mean he won’t try to stop this, fix it - whatever is still left on the table.

“I just saved you, yet again. Has anyone but your closest kin ever done more for you? All I ask is this one thing.”

Now that’s exactly the shit Delilah would say, was she here. Dean wonders if Cas knows that, but doesn’t share the trivia.

“Trust your plan to pop Purgatory?”

Maybe if he says that out loud Cas will finally hear how stupid this is.

“I’ve earned that, Dean.”

Maybe not.

No point in raising the word count on trying to convince him anymore. You can move a mountain, you can gank the devil, you can even escape both death and taxes, but you can’t un-convince someone who’s convinced he _earned_ things. With that in mind, Dean instructs where and why he can be kissed now.

Castiel knows how to intimately touch even better. Takes him by surprise, the echo of his warm breath the last thing on his neck before Cas grips his hair - tight, as he is wont to do - and cuts.

Takes no prisoners save for one. But Sam has grown into his arms, old noose. And every monster and their grandma know this story just right. Cas knows it best.

Way to fuck two birds with one stone.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**[7.]**

He’s by the lake that’s made just for him, but it lacks real effort this time. It’s budget scenography, built to contain him, not to please him. He’s not the superstar of this story. Nor the author. Doesn’t really know what he is here, if anything.

The power that is shows up, eats the spotlight. Assesses the design with delight. Looks fresh and younger; near pristine, most of all. Maybe even the damn coat has been ironed for once. Too bad the holiness doesn’t make Cas the real deal. He can put the tetragram on his forehead and he still won’t be God, but good luck with telling him that.

“Anteater,” Dean greets, half-assing the playing along.

“Ant,” Castiel says, and it’s gratingly fond.

There’s a smile crawling up his face, graceful and merciful and kind, but Dean won’t be basking in that. He will wipe that off. He remembers now what he is: he’s the janitor for disasters.

“How can I help you fuck off today?”

“Don’t you get tired of this, Dean?”

“Hate to disappoint, but I got worse nightmares in my trauma fodder. This ain’t exactly my top five.”

“This is not what I’m talking about, don’t pretend to be so literal,” Cas says, always a drop of amusement before it dries in his voice and leaves bare frustration to behold.

“You know what would be really great? If you would not elaborate on that, thanks.”

“This pointless anger in you,” he does, of course, the willfully deaf motherucker. “Lack of real direction. Keeping this unfounded stubbornness alive. Freedom is a length of rope and I wouldn’t want you to-”

“Hang myself with it. Oh, I’d love to.”

“It will cost nothing to leave it behind. Put down your tools and your schemes, Dean. You know you don’t need to try to stop me, there is nothing to be stopped.”

“Dude that breaks into my head uninvited, tries to throw propaganda think pieces at me and then scrubs the slate clean every night when it doesn’t work? Textbook example of something to be stopped, Cas.”

“I can’t help that you sometimes need to be told what’s in your best interest when you fail to see on your own. You don’t believe me, but you were made to be guided and saved, protected,” Cas pauses then, maybe looking for something better than the narrative he’s already trying to sell. “Held.”

“Had, you mean,” Dean corrects. “I was made to be had. Old song, I know all the covers.”

“No,” Castiel’s mouth says, but his eyes say yes.

Dean retaliates by rolling his.

“Zap me back to sleep, Cas, I have a fake God to end in the morning and I don’t wanna be late for work.”

“In this case, neither do I.”

Castiel comes closer, pets Dean’s hair before he places his fingertips to his forehead. Too brief to have time to hurl an insult, but enough for his head to still ache from how it was ruined.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**[8.]**

They throw the terms and conditions at him, make him read.

  1. Saying that you forgive, care and love doesn’t stop you getting hit unless you tear all your defenses down, break your ribs to expose the heart and beg you can’t live without them.

  2. Yes, they still can leave you again afterwards.

  3. You don’t get to have friends. Especially good friends. Friends that see you, friends that hear you. Friends that could have been lovers because they loved you and you loved them back. Friends that had to die.

  4. By your hand.

  5. Because you were made to [leave blank, this varies].




Dean has no hair, no strength, so he signs.

The noose on his neck is a leash. Was one, all along.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**[9.]**

He has the jawbone blade now. Too little, too late, but he will kill all the Philistines. His hair starts to grow back. The bone grows into him, settles into his hand as if she was home.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**[10.]**

A love letter.

From Dean, to Dean:

_SAMMY LET ME GO_

His hair is grown back. He combs it to the other side. Turns over a new leaf, starts a new story. The one with a happy ending.

 

 

From: we love you

To: [you’re not] Dean

Subject: NO

 

His brother, his eternal Delilah, they tie him to the dungeon chair, they break his throne, they cut his hair, and from his lips they draw the fuck me, fuck you, and fuck Leonard Cohen-ujah.

Well,

His Gods, they’re praised now. Madly, deeply.

Hallelujah.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**[11.]**

When her eyes fall on him, he is the first story she’s seen in ages of ages. He feels just like her, he feels just like home as she reads him. She loves him from first word and she’s breathtaken, wants to carry him in the pocket of her heart like a bible.

She had a noose to her neck for eons, she’s been forever a flower in the attic, all alone, angry, crying. He’s just like her, he’s just like her, she sees him, she wants to tear the rope and give him a crown of carnations. In her aching heart he will be king, he will fill the empty, he won’t cry.

Dean doesn’t understand how no one can hear her screaming, her words are static noise for everyone around but she resonates within him, he listens, he knows, and with her, he aches.

They mock him until they make him come and end her. He doesn’t want to. But the sun ate away all the choices. He swallows millions of suns. One last time, he is Samson.

He’s been carrying a bomb in his chest for so many years - what should it mean just one more, what should it mean to die anew. It means nothing but a promise that the rope will stop chafing.

He finds the time for his mother’s grave at last. Makes himself familiar. His ash will like it here; a neatly trimmed lawn of his own where it will always wander.

Then he goes, where his columns are, where she is, he walks in, blooms a garden of carnage.

They trade their stories.

The epilogue is what she wants to grant him.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**[12.]**

At the beginning of this story there was a little boy who cried for his mother, his tears swallowed by silence. Since page one, for seventy four years and counting. Before the bell tolled for her, she started this.

Then she comes back, rips off her glory, the remains of what was holy falls away like old scabs. She’s something else, she always was, and she doesn’t see him, just the things she’s lost.

Dean lost every single thing, he lost himself when he lost her and she, she started this. She tied the oldest noose, she put it around his neck and wrapped his cheeks with sweet kisses. He was made to wear it and deep inside, she knew.

She will always be his greatest jewel, the largest shard in his ribcage, now cracked open. She doesn’t hear his bones snap, calling to her. She doesn’t see the tears he bleeds, she doesn’t see him. She keeps cradling the things that are gone. She doesn’t count him as a thing that she still has.

He’s right beside her. For the love of fuck, he’s right beside her. All this time he kept waiting. For the mother, his mother, to untie him.

“I need you to really look at me and see me.” But she’s away, away, away. “Mom, I need you to see me. Please.”

The last broken piece of his heart falls to the floor, she hears it. She sees him. She knows him. She wants to. Dean forgives her.

With the last beating part of his heart, into a hole, she jumps away, away, away.

And his rope is yanked, drags him with, until he hits all the nothing.

He keeps on grieving and crying for his mother. Seventy four years, one more night, and counting.

 


End file.
